


injured

by TheThirteenthHour



Series: #squadgoals — a collection of drabbles [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Multi, they're all dating each other but this one's nadia-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 12:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17366027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirteenthHour/pseuds/TheThirteenthHour
Summary: The last thing Nadia wants is for them to fear for her life.





	injured

**Author's Note:**

> This currently comes after the drabble in the series where Nadia says she's gonna jump off the Atlas, but she's not in the infirmary because of that lol These are separate events

Consciousness comes back to Nadia in waves.

Stirring in her hair.

Pressure on her hands.

Murmurs and mumbles she still recognizes.

She sees from time to time. Hazy white and orange, one figure immediately at her left, two more by the end of her bed. She smiles in her mind and falls back asleep.

At some point, feelings and sounds become things she can identify. Ina is a slight weight beside her, her head laid down next to her on the infirmary bed. She braids Nadia’s hair, enough worry in her touch that Nadia wants to place her hand on her cheek and tell her she’s okay. But she can’t bring herself to move.

Her boys have her hands occupied anyway. Ryan rubs circles into one of her palms, and James holds her other hand up in a vise grip pressed against his forehead. James’ breath floats up to her fingertips, warm and quick and scared. Her fingers only twitch when she tries to move them, heavy with sleep and whatever’s in her system.

James takes a sharp, shaky breath.

Ryan stops rubbing her hand, but his thumb presses against her palm. Comforting. “James,” he says, voice as still and cool as the desert night. She misses that. The desert. But the stars are so much more beautiful in space.

James says nothing. His breath continues, too quick and too shallow. But he tightens his grip on her. She can feel her fingertips going red.

“ _James_.”

Nothing.

Ina huffs. Her fingers quicken in her hair, frustrated, and Nadia can feel how badly Ina wants to say something they’ve all said countless times before. But it’s different this time. Always different when one of them winds up in the infirmary like this.

Nadia wonders about that. Neck brace. IV in her arm. Doesn’t feel like she has a cast. Doesn’t feel like she has stitches either, but she’s willing to bet she’s got them. What even happened? A mission on some planet, she remembers that much. Suiting up, kissing them each, climbing into her jet. But after that...

“Hey,” Ryan says, stern and quiet. He reaches across the bed and lifts James’ chin in a way that matches his tone.

She can’t tell what kind of look James gives him. Her vision’s too blurry. But she can make an accurate guess. He’s such a worrier, and he puts too much on his shoulders.

“Stop it,” Ryan breathes, his voice on the edge of cracking. “It’s not your fault… It’s _not_.”

There’s a pause where none of them move. Ina stills beside her, likely watching as James and Ryan carry a wordless argument that neither of them will win. It’s the same damn argument every time, too.

This time, Ryan’s closing statement is, “We _all_ look out for each other.”

James sniffs and turns away. He’s not yielding, but it’s close enough.

“So we’re all responsible,” Ina whispers, level and matter-of-fact as ever. But there’s something agonized about her tone that Nadia feels in her touch.

Ryan sighs. “No, that—” he starts, facing Ina, ready to argue and backpedal because that’s not at all what he means, they know that. But his gaze catches Nadia’s, and even though he’s blurry, the way he stops short and stares… He looks like he’s going to cry. “Nadia?”

She smiles. Or, tries to. The muscles in her face need too much energy to move. “Hey,” she says, hoarse as hell.

She wants to find humor in the way the way shock hits them all at once, cracking the last of their composure. If nothing else, she wants to pat them each on the head, easily, blithely, all _there, there_ so that maybe they won’t cry. Maybe they’ll yell at her instead for doing or not doing whatever it was that landed her in here. That’d be much better.

But Ina springs up and touches her face, shaky, desperate, disbelieving— Ryan leans forward and looms over her like a tearful angel— James stares at her, unmoving and unbreathing—

And her throat tightens.

They exist in a long moment that she worries won’t end, like they’re all afraid saying anything will irreversibly break them.

Ina shudders, and the moment, at least, begins to break.

Ina clenches her fists, one in her hospital gown, the other in her hair, tugging at her scalp for a short, desperate moment. She pushes the top of her head against Nadia’s cheek. And she trembles. She cries without a sound, and Nadia needs to hold her. She needs to cradle Ina’s head and comfort her, but she needs to keep holding Ryan and James too. She needs to hold all of them.

She doesn’t have the energy to pry her hands free anyway, especially not from James. So she leans into Ina, a bodily motion that sends a dull ache humming along her nerves. “I’m okay,” she whispers.

James chokes out a sound that’s all breath and no voice, a scoff and a laugh rolled into one harmonious expression of offense and relief.

Ryan holds her cheek in one hand and presses his forehead to her temple. He cries even more quietly than Ina, still and breathing carefully through his mouth. His tears give him away, dripping onto her cheek and burning a hole in her chest.

“I’m okay,” she repeats, but the tremor in her voice betrays her. She tries to swallow it down, tries to blink back the tears in her own eyes.

“No, you’re not,” James hisses, a sob underpinning his words and driving into her heart. “You— God, we thought—” She can feel her own pulse in his grip, tight enough to make her fingers feel swollen. He presses her hand against his face like she could pull the hurt right out of his head, and she wishes she could. She wants to wipe their tears away and soften their breaths. But she can’t right now. And maybe he finally realizes that. He doesn’t let go of her hand, but he finds refuge below her breast, pressing his forehead against a bruise that makes itself known with sudden pain. “We thought we lost you,” he cries.

Ina whimpers in her ear.

Ryan pulls his hand from her cheek to cradle James’ head. James quiets a little, but he still shakes against her. He still squeezes her hand.

She never wants to scare them. She never, ever wants them to fear for her life, even if it is in the job description. She squeezes her eyes shut, and a tear rolls down her face and settles in Ina’s hair. “I’m sorry,” Nadia cries. “I’m sorry, I—”

Ryan shushes her and kisses her chin. His eyes are red and gleaming, and it unsettles her to see him torn open. It stirs her heart and soul in all the wrong ways, a twisting pit in the center of her chest. But she quiets under his gaze, comforting her even through his tears. “Not your fault, baby,” he murmurs.

She swallows the lump in her throat. “Not yours, either…”

He squints like he wants to argue. But he’s smart. He’s not stubborn like James, who freezes and tenses against her side. “Okay,” Ryan whispers. He kisses her forehead. “Okay…”

“I’m serious,” she says, though her voice is a quiet, trembling thing that doesn’t carry the assurance she needs it to. She squeezes James’ hand, though the action is more like a twitch. A subtle curl of her fingers around his. “Don’t convince yourselves it’s your fault, it’s not.”

Ina shudders, a puff of warm air against the side of her face that stirs her hair and makes all the tear tracks known on her skin. “We could have…” Ina starts, small and hurt and uncertain, so heartachingly unlike herself.

“No,” she says. She can move one hand now, shaking, dragging it between the press of Ryan’s and Ina’s bodies to brush her knuckles against Ina’s cheek. “No what-ifs… I’m okay. That’s what matters.”

James sobs. He doesn’t mean to. He tries to catch himself, tries to suck the breath back into his lungs, but it’s too late. She can’t squeeze his hand any tighter, but she can rub her thumb against his skin. “James,” she whispers. “I mean it.”

His entire body argues, coiling against her side with every ounce of protectiveness and love and fear and fight he has in him. But none of it finds its way past his lips. It’s an argument he knows he can’t win, but he’ll never stop trying, will he.

He stays wound tight against her until Ryan shushes him, and a fraction of the tension leaves his body in a whimper. “I—”

“I know,” she says. “It’s okay… You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He sniffs and presses his face into her side, right on the edge of the bruise. And he quiets.

They’re warm and tearful against her. Their fists clench in her hair and hospital gown, and their thumbs sweep over skin and bruises. Everything aches, physically, yes, but she wishes she could take their pain and fear from them. If she could brush it away with her touch, or kiss it off their faces…

She can at least smile to herself as they quiet, some sort of calm acceptance finally settling into their bones and evening their breaths, leaving them slack around her. “You know what this means?” she whispers, like the quiet’s too fragile to break any differently.

Ryan’s the only one who stirs, moving to look at her with gleaming eyes.

He has a cute nose. She wants to poke it. “When I’m discharged, I get to pick whose bed I sleep in.”

He laughs softly. Finally, something happy in his sweet face. “I think we’ll all want to share.”

She grins. Of course she’d demand they climb into one tiny bed. She’d be in the middle just like now, maybe with Ryan and Ina at her sides and James pillowed on her stomach too. However they want. She’s not picky. “Good. I also get to eat all the dessert I want.”

Ina pets her hair agreeably, a soft, silent promise to exclusively give Nadia her unwanted desserts rather than give them to the rest of them to share.

“And… Oh, I get to pick all the movies for our next movie night.”

James kisses her side so gently she barely feels it, like she’s a fragile thing too close to slipping from his fingers. “Any other requests?” he murmurs.

He asks sweetly and genuinely. So of course she has to hum and smirk, even if Ryan’s the only one who can see her face. “I can think of a few dirty ones.”

James laughs softly.

Ryan rolls his eyes, and she purses her lips for a tiny kiss that he grants her with no hesitation.

“As expected,” Ina says, brushing her knuckles over her cheek all whisper-soft like a kitten, so light it almost tickles. “Whatever you want, Nadia.”

“Whatever I want?” she coos.

“As long as it’s not something that would land you on Jackass,” James says, “yes. Whatever you want.”

She laughs, a short, rough sound that hurts her chest to release. Worry flickers across Ryan’s face, but she smiles brightly and gets a kiss in return. “That sounds fair,” she says. “Can I just keep getting hugs and kisses for now?”

They give them to her happily, gently enveloping her in their arms and touching kisses where they can. They wrap her up in a soothing haze of warmth and love, and when she falls asleep, it’s to the sound of them telling her they love her.

**Author's Note:**

> this one got me cryin in the club
> 
> [tumblr](https://write-nonsense-by-the-ream.tumblr.com/post/181883290163/stop-it-ryan-breathes-his-voice-on-the-edge-of) || [twitter](https://twitter.com/thirteenthhr/status/1083167700858388481)


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